


In The Rough

by TheSingerThatYouWanted (orphan_account)



Series: The Fabled Police AU [2]
Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Detective AU, M/M, Once again this is hard to explain, Police AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:36:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3233093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheSingerThatYouWanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set around two months after the events of Full Circle</p><p>Dan and Jones, developing relationship stuff, and a healthy dose of crime. I think that about sums it up, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oh! You Pretty Things

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to even pretend to apologise for the amount of domesticity in this first chapter.

Reality slowly came into being in the form of a warm body pressed up against Dan’s. He smiled, letting awareness trickle into his mind, and blearily wondered what on earth he’d done to deserve this. Two months previously he’d been a recovering alcoholic who was clinging on to his flat by the skin of his teeth. Now he was in a different, much nicer flat, almost eight months sober, and lying in bed with his partner.  
Dan still hesitated to use the term ‘boyfriend’. It was accurate, but he always felt it sounded a little childish. Jones loved it when Dan referred to them as partners. He’d explained why once, when Dan was reading in bed one evening.  
“It’s because we’re called that at work too,” he’d said with a grin. “So it’s like they know, but really they have no idea.”  
Looking across at the sleeping form curled up next to him, Dan realised again just how beautiful Jones really was. His sharp, angular features looked odd at first, but when he smiled his whole face lit up. He was like a walking sunbeam. In sleep he lay with his lips slightly parted, a tiny smile tugging at his mouth, and always wrapped himself around Dan like he couldn’t bear to have even an inch of space between them. His dark hair framed his pale skin with red highlights appearing here and there as though to highlight the contrast. At the roots, and a little bit just behind his ears, it was possible to see his natural brown hair colour creeping in. He’d be dyeing it again in a week or so, but secretly Dan loved it. He loved that he was the only person who ever got close enough to see those tiny cracks in Jones’ carefully maintained appearance without being pushed away. It made him feel like he was worth more than he’d always feared.  
After another minute or two Dan cautiously began to disentangle himself from the shorter man, carefully rearranging his limbs until he could move away without waking him. Jones sighed heavily and curled up against Dan’s pillow instead, still asleep. With a fond smile on his lips, Dan wandered into the bathroom.  
Steam quickly filled the air as he showered, washing quickly. Jones always mocked him for his choice of soaps and toiletries, and Dan had to admit his relatively plain, supermarket-brand shampoo looked a little out of place amongst the array of colourful bottles with even more colourful names, but he liked it. He liked that Jones had moved aside to let him in, their possessions settling side-by-side until it was hard in some cases to remember who they had belonged to in the first place.  
He’d been nervous about introducing his things to the flat at first, unsure if what they had was going to last, until about a month in to their relationship when Jones had sat him down and told him flat out that he wanted him to stay. Up until then Dan had been uncertain of his place, often opting to spend his nights on the sofa unless Jones specifically asked him to come to bed. They’d been together for almost two months now- he would never admit to counting the days in his head- and Dan had finally stopped hesitating when he called the flat home.  
He heard music start up from somewhere else in the flat and smiled, rinsing the last of the shampoo from his hair and turning the water off. Jones was awake, then. He didn’t seem capable of existing without his music. If he was awake, there was a soundtrack playing in his head. He was either singing or listening to music, and he was happiest of all when he had his DJ decks. Some nights Dan stayed up on the sofa just to watch the younger man play, his fingers playing across the decks and an expression of pure joy on his face. He almost never looked happier than when he found the perfect note, the right line, the one thing that made the whole song fall into place.  
Dan dried off quickly, getting dressed in one of his few shirts. Jones always teased him about that, but Dan had never seen the need for an extravagant wardrobe. He had enough clothes to ensure he always had something to wear, and he didn’t really feel the need to buy any more. Jones, on the other hand, barely ever wore the same outfit twice. He had at least a hundred shirts, mostly with cut off sleeves to expose his shoulders, and more pairs of skinny jeans than Dan had ever seen in one place before. It was ridiculous, but somehow endearing. He was like a peacock, always looking for brighter colours.  
As he made his way through to the kitchen he sniffed at the air. He could smell coffee, and something else he couldn’t immediately place. It was probably breakfast. Jones often took it upon himself to make breakfast. He enjoyed cooking, and was remarkably good at it for someone who appeared to survive mostly on sweets and takeaways. Dan suspected it was because for once in his life the younger man had enough money to actually buy the ingredients to make proper meals. That was something Dan hadn’t thought of, but he was immensely glad of it. The rent had been effectively halved now they were sharing it, so they had been able to buy some small luxuries and Dan had finally started to pay off a couple of his debts. It felt good, not having to worry about money so much.  
The food was the best part, though. Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to reliably get at least two decent meals a day. He’d actually lost weight, which he definitely hadn’t been expecting. He suspected it was because he was managing to eat healthily rather than living solely on snacks and junk food. He didn’t think it was that noticeable, but only a few days previously Jones had commented on how slim he was looking, making a joke about how he would be able to fit into Jones’ jeans soon. While Dan doubted that was true, the compliment had made him smile. A lot of things made him smile now.  
“Something smells good,” he commented, running a hand absent-mindedly through his hair as he entered the room. Jones, who was standing by the stove, didn’t look around, but Dan could see a smile tug at his lips. He walked over and slipped his arms around Jones’ waist, kissing his neck lightly. He knew how much the younger man revelled in physical contact and was only too happy to oblige. Jones leaned back against his chest, sighing happily.  
“Morning,” he said with a smile. Dan rested his chin on Jones’ shoulder, looking down at what he was cooking.  
“Pancakes?” he said in surprise. “I didn’t know you could cook pancakes.”  
Jones laughed, swatting him away lightly.  
“You say that every time I cook something.”  
“Yeah, well, that’s because I didn’t think you could cook at all. It’s a surprise every time you don’t set the kitchen on fire.”  
Jones pointed towards the table with his spoon, where a mug of coffee sat beside a small cup of something cloudy and a tub of sugar.  
“Sit down, you cynical git,” he said affectionately. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”  
Dan did as he was told, taking a sip of his coffee and sitting down while Jones finished up. He loved watching the younger man cook. He concentrated so hard to follow the recipe whenever he made something for the first time, but as soon as he’d done it once he seemed to memorise how to make it and could recreate the meal without a single glance at a recipe book. It was a skill many people would probably kill to have, but to Jones it was just something he could do. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that it was unusual.  
“What’s this?” asked Dan after a moment, pulling the cup of cloudy liquid towards him. Before Jones had answered he stuck his finger in and licked it.  
“Lemon juice,” Jones told him, just as Dan’s face screwed up at the sour taste. He hoped Jones hadn’t noticed, and to his relief the younger man continued without breaking into a fit of giggles. “Could you do me a favour, actually, and grab the chocolate spread from the cupboard?”  
Dan got up and went to find the jar, still talking.  
“What do you need lemon juice for?” he asked, finding the spread behind a couple of mugs. There was a kind of organised chaos to the flat. It worked for both of them.  
“Pancake toppings,” replied Jones like it was the most obvious thing in the world, turning round and carrying a plate of slightly burnt pancakes over to the table. “Lemon juice and sugar’s brilliant on them, but I love chocolate too. Wasn’t sure what you’d like so I got ‘em both.”  
He straightened up, wiping his floury hands on his jeans and grinning. There was a tea towel slung over his shoulder. The domesticity of it all struck Dan as hilarious, and he laughed as he sat down. Jones looked questioningly at him.  
“What is it? Have I got flour on my face or something?”  
Dan shook his head.  
“You should get an apron,” he said by way of a reply. Jones sat down with a grin.  
“I should not.”  
“Yeah. With flowers on it. ‘Kiss the Cook,’ that kind of thing.”  
Jones laughed.  
“Shut up and eat your pancakes.”  
Dan looked fondly at the ridiculous man he’d fallen in love with and poured a liberal amount of lemon juice on his pancakes, sprinkling them with sugar before taking a bite.  
“Mmm,” he mumbled around his mouthful of food. “These are good.”  
“Cheers,” said Jones with a smile. They ate the rest of the meal more or less in silence. Dan snuck occasional glances across the table, watching the way Jones’ long hair fell across his face as he ate. He was beautiful, in a strange kind of way. Dan still couldn’t quite believe Jones felt the same way about him, even if he had told him often enough. By the time they were finished the younger man had chocolate smeared around his lips. Dan stood up and put the dishes in the sink before turning back to him.  
“Let me get that for you,” he said quietly, kissing Jones softly. The taste of chocolate lingered on his mouth after they broke apart. The younger man was grinning, licking the last of the spread from the corner of his mouth.  
“Thanks,” he said, blue eyes glinting. Dan looked down at his watch.  
“Time we were going,” he said, picking up his jacket. Jones nodded and stood up, then looked around in confusion, a slight frown crossing his face.  
“Have you seen my jacket?” he asked. “I’m sure I put it-”  
“By the door,” answered Dan without looking round. He fished in his pockets for his wallet and badge before following the younger man out of the room. He caught the car keys Jones tossed to him and gestured for him to lead the way.  
When they got in the car Jones slipped a CD in almost before Dan had even started the engine. It was a mix that he’d made a few weeks previously, a chaotic mixture of both their favourite bands that he always wanted to listen to on the way to work. He said it made his day better, and as the opening riff of ‘Disco 2000’ filled the air Dan was inclined to agree. Going to the office felt less like a punishment than it had for years.  
The journey to the station didn’t take long, and Dan pulled up to the parking space they had claimed as their own with a satisfied grin. He counted every day the spray paint wasn’t scrubbed off as a victory. Jones hopped out of the car, drumming absently on the roof as he waited for Dan to join him.  
“You go on up,” Dan told him “I just need to go get something.”  
Jones nodded, walking out of the car park with his hands in his pockets. Dan watched him go for a moment, enjoying the fact that he no longer had to pretend he wasn’t, before turning to walk outside and head to the coffee shop across the street. He’d been going there more or less every day since he’d become a detective. The people who worked there knew him and smiled when he walked in.  
“Morning, Dan,” said the girl behind the counter with a smile. Her name was Chloe, he remembered. He wasn’t all that great at remembering names, but he felt he should make the effort after so many morning conversations. “I’m guessing you’ll be wanting your usual coffee and hot chocolate?”  
“Yeah, please,” replied Dan, peering at the tray of cakes and pastries on the counter. “And can I get a couple of those muffins as well?”  
The girl nodded and started making the drinks, steam hissing from the coffee machine as she worked.  
“How’s Jones?”  
“He’s good. Great. Things are… yeah, things are going well,” said Dan. He wasn’t used to other people knowing about his relationship with the other man, though in fairness he hadn’t told them. They’d sort of worked it out for themselves. Dan had made them swear not to let any of the other officers know, and the handful of baristas confronting him about it had all laughed and promised not to spread it around. Chloe smiled.  
“I’m glad. You smile more when you talk about him,” she added, handing him two takeaway mugs and a small paper bag containing two chocolate chip muffins. He handed her the money, looking away sheepishly. She grinned.  
“Sorry. I’m embarrassing you.”  
“No- well, yeah, you are a bit.”  
Chloe laughed and handed over his change.  
“Have a nice day.”  
“Yeah. You too.”  
He took the drinks with a small smile, heading back over to the station. The doors still creaked like something straight out of a horror movie, and the receptionist still spared him barely a glance. It always struck him as odd, the way so little had changed here when his life had completely turned around. As he reached the foul-smelling lift, Nathan materialised at his side. Dan still didn’t understand how he did that. A part of him was convinced that he hid in a cupboard or something until Dan arrived in the mornings.  
“Hey, Preacher Man!” he said with a grin. Dan sighed. There was always something to annoy him, wasn’t there. It was one of the fundamental laws of the universe that for every Dan Ashcroft trying to get by there had to be a Nathan Barley trying to make that as difficult as possible.  
“Morning, Nathan,” he said flatly. Nathan eyed up the cups in his hands.  
“One of them for me?”  
“No”  
“Oh, come on, Preach. When are you gonna start buying me coffee?”  
 _When you stop being such a monumental tit_ , thought Dan, but he didn’t say it. Instead he stepped out of the lift, ignoring Nathan’s standard nonsensical parting shot and heading straight to his desk. Jones was spinning around in his seat, grinning when he saw Dan approach. Dan had to fight to keep the answering grin off his face. It was difficult to keep up appearances in work sometimes. Jones was unprofessional enough as it was.  
“I brought hot chocolate,” he said, raising the cup like it was a greeting. Jones beamed, accepting the drink eagerly. He popped the lid off, tongue darting out to lick at the cream on top. Dan glared at him and Jones stopped, looking a little sheepish, and took a drink. As always, the man seemed unable to consume anything without making a mess. Cream decorated his top lip, and Dan looked down at the papers on his desk in an attempt to distract himself from wanting to kiss him.  
He sighed as he flicked through the small stack of memos. There was nothing important there, just reminders of things he either already knew or had decided in advance he didn’t care about. There hadn’t been anything interesting to do for days, just a stack of paperwork. Dan was almost wishing for a murder just so he’d have something to do.  
“What’s in the bag?” asked Jones, sliding his chair closer so he could look over Dan’s shoulder. Dan pushed the bag across the table away from him.  
“You’ll find out,” he said. Jones reached out and Dan shot him a warning look.  
“Later,” he added. Jones frowned, slumping back in his chair.  
“I’m bored,” he said, pulling a discarded memo towards him and doodling absent-mindedly on the back.  
“Me too.”  
Jones looked back up towards him, opening his mouth as though to speak, but Dan never found out what it was he’d been going to say. Phones around the office began to ring, and after a moment or two several officers jumped to their feet.  
“What’s goin’ on?” asked Jones, looking around in confusion. Dan shrugged, confusion etched clearly into his face.  
“There’s been a robbery,” one officer informed them as she hurried past. Dan frowned.  
“A robbery? Not really our division, is it?”  
“They’re armed,” she explained, pausing and turning to face them. “At least one of them has a gun, and there are hostages. If it’s not our division now, it will be soon if we don’t stop it.”  
Dan got up and pulled his jacket on, aware that Jones was doing the same behind him. A sense of urgency flooded him, driving out any trace of boredom or tiredness that the coffee hadn’t already dealt with.  
“How many?” he asked. The officer- she was new, and Dan couldn’t remember her name- shrugged.  
“Four, maybe five. We don’t know for certain.”  
“Where is it?” asked Jones, as the three of them made their way quickly towards the stairs. She gave the address, and Jones whistled.  
“That’s the diamond place, right?” he asked.  
“Exactly.”  
They reached the bottom of the stairs and the officer hurried off towards her own car. Dan unlocked theirs and slid in, Jones hopping in beside him. He gunned the engine, not pausing to turn off the music. As he drove away, edging a little over the speed limit in his haste, it occurred to him that there was a certain irony in driving to crime scenes to the tune of ‘I Fought the Law’.  
“I hope the law wins,” he muttered.


	2. Diamond Dogs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used like all my favourite songs titling the first one of these help

Patrol cars were clustered around the street like children on their first day of school waiting for a teacher to show them around, uncertain and generally just getting in the way. Dan had noticed this about them. It was the same on just about every case he’d ever been a part of. One or two of the younger officers weren’t so bad- although he had spotted Smanks and his friend getting on pretty well with Nathan, and was a little worried about an army of copycat Barleys invading his office- but the older ones tended to be quite set in their ways, and those ways were almost always ‘we’ll let the detectives deal with it’. Dan often found himself having to chaperone what should have been simple cases. He was starting to feel like an overstressed single father.  
Jones appeared at his elbow and Dan wondered briefly if this counted as him having someone else to do the parenting with him.  
“Is it unprofessional to eat a banana at a crime scene?” asked the younger man innocently, grinning up at him. Dan shook his head. Of course a responsible partner would have been too much to hope for.  
Unperturbed by Dan’s non-answer, Jones reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a banana. The man’s coat must have been like Mary Poppins’ handbag; no matter how empty his pockets looked, there was always something there and it was usually something that no sane person would carry with them. The banana was no exception. Dan was vaguely aware of Jones eating as he stared into space for a moment, distracted by the mental image of a goth Mary Poppins. He peeled it slowly, resting it in his mouth for a moment before biting the tip off. Something about the movement startled Dan back into reality and he squinted at the shorter man in confusion.  
“Where did you even-? No, forget it, I don’t think I want to know. Give me that.”  
Jones shook his head, stepping backwards with the banana hanging out of his mouth. Dan almost reached for it before giving in and letting Jones keep it. As he watched, the younger man licked slowly up the length of the banana, smirking. Dan shook his head in exasperation.  
“Fine. But just… finish it quickly, will you? This is a hostage situation.”  
Jones nodded and, not breaking eye contact with Dan, swallowed the banana in a further four bites. He looked around for a moment with the skin in his hand, not sure where to put it, before handing it to a confused officer and running over to the large black van which had just pulled up. Dan followed him, ignoring the protests of the man holding the banana skin and trying to hide the small smile tugging at his lips. This was serious. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by Jones’ nonsense.  
Pingu was standing by the van, and he waved Dan over a little imperiously. He’d gotten a lot more confident since his promotion, to the point where Dan even felt able to knock him about a bit and tease him without worrying he was going to make the young man cry. For some reason he still put up with Nathan though. Dan hadn’t worked up the courage to ask him why. He wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to know the answer.  
“Hey, Pingu,” he said, trying to work out how professional he was expected to appear. Pingu nodded at him by way of greeting.  
“I was explaining to Jones what’s going on,” he said. “There are at least four hostages inside, all employees of the shop. Two men in balaclavas entered around half an hour ago, and a passer-by called us when they heard glass shatter inside and a cry for help. We’re pretty confident now that the men are carrying silenced weapons.”  
Dan nodded slowly, taking it all in.  
“Okay,” he said eventually. “So what’s the plan?”  
“The plan is to wait, for now at least,” replied Pingu, looking between them. “You two aren’t the most experienced of the detectives here, so you’re basically just to follow orders.”  
Dan frowned and Pingu shot him an exasperated glance that was only partly friendly.  
“I know neither of you would say that’s your forte, but it’s for the best at the moment. We’ve called-”  
“What’s that?” interrupted Jones, pointing to something around the other side of the van. He clearly hadn’t been paying any attention to a word Pingu had said. Dan followed his gaze, and frowned.  
“Yeah, actually, Pingu, he’s got a point. What is that?”  
There were a crowd of people in bulletproof vests standing around on the other side of the van, all holding weapons of some sort and checking them thoroughly. Dan wasn’t quite sure how threatened he was supposed to feel by them, but he was pretty certain he wouldn’t want to be on their bad side. He turned back to their newest DCI, who was looking uncomfortable.  
“This is unusual in a hostage situation-” he began, then stopped and looked down at his shoes.  
“Yes?” prompted Dan. Jones rocked back on his heels, staring intently at Pingu as he collected himself. Taking a deep breath, the young man met Dan’s gaze again. He looked nervous. Dan realised he was probably in full Intimidating Detective mode, and made a conscious effort to tone it down a little.  
“The way we’d expect this to go is for them to have elected a spokesperson of sorts,” Pingu explained. “They would have made their demands, and probably set a time limit as well. As I’m sure you know, we have teams ready to deal with that eventuality. But as it stands, we don’t know what we’re dealing with. Therefore we’ve decided- I’ve, uh, decided- that our best bet is to send in a team through the back doors and try to neutralise the situation.”  
Dan blinked. He’d never heard someone sound so professional when talking about sending men with guns into a hostage situation.  
“That was such a politician’s answer,” muttered Jones, nudging Dan to get his attention. “I didn’t understand a word of that, I got distracted and started thinking about ice-cream. What did he say?”  
“He wants to send people in to shoot them,” said Dan coldly, looking Pingu straight in the eyes as he spoke. “Without trying to negotiate, he wants to send people with guns into a room full of other people with guns in the hopes it’ll make his problems all go away. Isn’t that right?”  
Pingu drew himself up to his full height, which was still a good few inches shorter than Dan.  
“I’ve analysed the risks,” he said, a little shakily. “This is the best option.”  
As he finished speaking a helmeted head looked around the side of the van.  
“Excuse me?” said the man wearing said helmet, his voice a little muffled. “DCI, can I have a word?”  
“Of course,” said Pingu, clearly glad for the diversion. Dan glared at him, anger settling uneasily in his stomach. He had always thought that bringing more weapons to a gunfight was a sure way to make things worse, whether it was a knife or a grenade. He liked Pingu better than he liked some of the other people he was forced to work with, but he couldn’t agree with him on this. It wasn’t necessary to go in armed, not yet anyway. Surely they could negotiate.  
As though reading his mind, Jones put a hand gently on his arm.  
“If they don’t go in, will more people get hurt?” he asked. Dan shook his head in exasperation.  
“I don’t know! But if they go in there like that, someone could get themselves killed.”  
“If they wait, they could kill innocent people,” Jones pointed out. “This way the people who’ve done nothing wrong will get out safely.”  
Dan sighed, looking down at the tarmac, and Jones ran his fingers quickly down Dan’s arm and squeezed his hand lightly.  
“I’m not sayin’ I agree with them,” he said quietly. “But maybe Pingu’s right. It’s what they’ve got to do.”  
He pressed a quick kiss to Dan’s cheek, pulling away instantly. Dan stared at him, shock and embarrassment coiling in his stomach along with the familiar sting of guilt. He looked around furtively, but nobody seemed to be pointing or taking photos. He was defensive nonetheless.  
“We’re at work,” he hissed. “People are going to see.”  
“No-one’s looking,” grinned Jones. “C’mon, it’ll be alright.”  
Dan grumbled under his breath, trying to push aside the odd mixture of unease and warmth boiling inside of him. Pingu finished his discussion with the other officer and turned back to them, looking solemn. Dan was immediately concerned. That kind of look from a senior officer always meant trouble.  
“Dan, Jones… we may need your help after all,” said the DCI. Dan’s hands curled instinctively into fists by his sides, and Jones stepped in front of him before subtly wrapping his long fingers around Dan’s. As he swiped his thumb gently across Dan’s knuckles, the message was clear. _Calm down. It’ll be okay._ He took a deep breath and forced himself to stop thinking about it.  
“What do you need us to do?” he asked.  
“You can both handle a gun, right?” asked Pingu in response. Dan felt his heart sink, and Jones tensed.  
“We’re not going in there.”  
The words slipped out before he’d properly processed them, but for once his brain wholeheartedly agreed with what his mouth was saying. The helmeted man stepped in.  
“We just need a couple of other men,” he explained. “Two of our team called in sick. It wouldn’t be particularly dangerous, and there most likely won’t be any bloodshed. We’d like to have one or two people watching the doors while we go in and deal with it.”  
Dan wanted to refuse. Even the thought of taking a gun in there made his skin crawl. Yet somehow, in a flurry of activity and chaotic movement, he’d ended up being strapped into a bulletproof vest and handed a pistol that felt awkward and unbalanced in his hand. Angry and more than a little nervous, he shuffled over to Jones, who was dressed in a similar way.  
“This vest is well uncomfortable,” quipped the younger man, his light-hearted tone doing nothing to hide how pale he was. Jones was clearly scared. None of the cases they’d handled together had involved guns, not since the very first one, and Dan remembered only too clearly how that had gone. He wished they were alone so he could hug his partner, but seeing as they were surrounded by their colleagues he decided it probably wasn’t the best of ideas.  
“I know what you mean,” he replied instead, playing along, acting as though everything was normal. “Hardly going to be in fashion any time soon, is it?”  
“Since when did you care about fashion?” laughed Jones, and Dan managed a smile. For a moment he felt like he could do this, but then his confidence was shattered along with the spell as the other officer spoke.  
“You two,” called the helmeted man. Dan still hadn’t found out what his name was, and if he was honest he didn’t care. “We need to move.”  
As one, the crowd of officers made their way to the doors, a sea of black clothing. Well, more of a puddle really. It wasn’t that big a group. Dan and Jones hung back, waiting for instructions as one of the men produced a large pair of bolt cutters and broke the side door open with a remarkably soft clicking noise. The door swung open to reveal a long, dark corridor. Inside everything was quiet. It felt like the beginning of every horror film Dan had ever watched, and he felt his nerves return as he looked at it.  
Long fingers twined in between his own and Dan reached out blindly to pull Jones a little closer to his side, knowing that nobody would be watching. The younger man pressed close for a few seconds, and Dan could feel him trembling slightly.  
 _It’ll be okay_ , Dan wanted to tell him. _I won’t let them hurt you._ But his mouth was dry and he’d been told to maintain radio silence, so he settled for gripping Jones’ hand tightly.  
“Okay,” said the man who’d first spoken to them- Dan assumed he was the leader- as the door opened. “Ashcroft, you stay here. Jones, with me.”  
Jones looked up at Dan for a moment, worry flashing in his blue eyes, before reluctantly following the rest of the officers. Dan was left alone, standing awkwardly just inside of the door, checking and rechecking his weapon just for something to do. He didn’t like the gun, but he had to admit he felt safer holding it.  
The minutes ticked by, every passing second making Dan’s stomach twist sickeningly in apprehension. Even the slightest noise made him jump. After a while he heard sounds of a scuffle, quiet at first but quickly growing louder. His every instinct told him to run, either towards the sound or far away from it, and it took every bit of self-control he possessed not to move. He bounced nervously on the spot, tensed in what a small part of his brain acknowledged as textbook fight-or-flight response. Then a single gunshot rang out, echoing through the building, and Dan’s radio crackled into life.  
“Ashcroft? Come on through.”  
Dan couldn’t tell how calm the voice sounded, distorted as it was through the old headsets, but he was already running. He burst into the main area of the shop, looking around frantically before realising that all eyes were on him and hurriedly composing himself. To his relief he spotted Jones standing up against the far wall, looking a little drained but otherwise unharmed. There was a bullet hole in one wall.  
The professionals nodded in his direction, but otherwise he was more or less ignored. Jones sidled over to him.  
“What’s going on?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking. Jones explained as briefly as he could.  
“We had to walk off ahead, but they kept me at the back ‘cause they knew I’m useless. The guy over there, on the floor, came lurching out like something out of a zombie movie. It was pretty scary. The big man in front, he fired a warning shot at him. Turns out the only people here are the hostages. We don’t have any idea where the kidnappers went, but we’ve checked against the records and things and they aren’t lying.”  
Dan nodded, taking a proper look around. The other officers seemed satisfied that the people in the shop really were who they claimed to be, which Dan thought a little unnecessary. It was pretty obvious they weren’t the criminals. For one thing, it wasn’t like they were going to duct tape their own hands together. Besides, if you were going to rob the place where you worked then surely there were better ways to go about it than a big, ostentatious shootout.  
One by one the hostages were led out, where paramedics and police officers were waiting to patch them up and ask them question as they saw fit. Jones quickly shed his vest and handed the gun back to someone who looked like they knew what to do with it, and Dan followed his lead before walking outside and down a short alleyway. Jones followed him, looking confused.  
“Dan? You alright?” he asked. Dan shook his head, fear juddering through him now the focus and adrenaline had worn off.  
“Can I…” asked Jones, before abruptly stepping in and hugging him tightly. Dan was grateful that the younger man understood why he’d led them away. He wrapped his arms around him, clutching at the material of his shirt and breathing him in for a few moments.  
“Let’s agree to never do that again,” he said. Jones laughed.  
“Can’t make you any promises there,” he said with a grin. “Perks of the job, an’ all that.”  
Dan sighed and pushed him lightly away, his heart rate back under control for the time being. Jones looked away, smiling softly up at him from under his long fringe.  
“I’m glad you’re alright though,” he told Dan quietly. “I know there was nobody near you, but I wasn’t paying attention when they fired that gun. For a moment I thought-”  
“I’m okay,” Dan said. It was simple, but judging by Jones’ smile it was enough.  
“C’mon,” said the younger man, tugging at Dan’s sleeve. They walked back out into the group of people, heads up and shoulders back in forced confidence. Dan was practically an expert at it. Pretend you’re in charge and sooner or later you’ll start to believe it.  
“What do we do now?” asked Jones. Dan shrugged.  
“Honestly? I think we just sort of wait. Forensics get to take a look inside, the witnesses are being patched up so we can’t exactly take them in for questioning now, and everyone else is just decoration.”  
“Well, I am very pretty,” nodded Jones in mock seriousness. “Do we go back to the station, then?”  
“No.”  
Dan caught Pingu’s eye as he spoke and nodded to him, walking over. The young man nodded a reply.  
“Anything catch your eye in there?” he asked. “Obviously you’ll have a full forensics report, but if there were any details you think stood out it might be useful to hear them.”  
Dan shook his head but, to his surprise, Jones was nodding earnestly.  
“Yeah, that huge diamond by the till. Did you see it? It was the size of a car. Like a Mini made of precious stones.”  
Dan opened his mouth to tell the younger man to stop acting like the magpie he was, fixating on shiny things rather than actually paying attention, then paused. A shiver of understanding traced a path down his spine. Pingu looked between them in confusion, but Dan’s attention was entirely on Jones.  
“That is odd, actually.”  
Jones grinned at him, continuing like Pingu wasn’t even there.  
“Isn’t it? I mean, if I was gonna rob a jewellery shop, that’s the first thing I’d go for. It just looks valuable, you know?”  
Dan turned to Pingu briefly.  
“Excuse us,” he told the DCI. “We may have some theories to go over.”


	3. Sound and Vision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a longer chapter than the others, which is why it took a bit longer to post. Well, that and homework. In fact, let's blame it on homework. Let's do that.

A heavy sigh fluttered from Dan’s lips, causing the sheets of paper on the desk in front of him to rustle slightly. Reaching out, he closed the lid of his laptop and blinked away a little of the strain in his eyes. Normally he’d be conducting interviews with whoever was head of security at the company, but apparently the man who was usually in charge of security at the jewellery shop was ill that day. That would have been enough to make him a suspect if he hadn’t been in hospital, waiting to get his appendix removed. So instead they’d been stuck reviewing security footage for what felt like years, and there was still nothing that was of any use. The cameras had been disabled a full hour before the actual robbery, so they’d resorted to trawling through all the film from the previous 24 hours in the hopes of catching someone tampering with the cameras. This proved more difficult than expected, because although there were several times the cameras were partially obscured and people moved close, there were no signs that they were actually interfering with the equipment. Dan was pretty sure he was going to go mad if he had to stare at people buying jewellery for even five minutes longer.  
“That’s it,” he told Jones matter-of-factly. “I’m done here. There’s no possible way they could have done it.”  
The statement was unusually pessimistic, even for him, but Dan was frustrated. There was nothing he could see in the film that would provide even the slightest clue as to what was going on, which meant that instead of a thread to chase down he was sitting staring at a brick wall. It made him angry.  
Jones, somehow, was smiling. He spun around in his chair, leaning back and chewing on the end of his pencil as he gazed at Dan.  
“It’s not impossible,” he said with a grin. “I mean, think about it.”  
Dan frowned, tiredness making his bones ache. He was in no mood for jokes and he was pretty sure it was obvious, but Jones continued, undeterred by the older man’s aura of disdain.  
“They could be magic.”  
“Magic. Really.”  
Jones shot him a cheeky grin, scooting his beloved swivel chair a little closer. His eyes were sparkling, some strange fantastical mischief bubbling away in his brain, and Dan wished- not for the first time- that he could take a peek inside the younger man’s head. There must be a million songs hidden in there, a myriad of different ideas and worlds. Jones had confided in him once that the reason he’d built such a detailed internal universe was as a way of escaping from the bullying he’d received as a child and teenager. Sometimes, late at night when they were both caught up in another bout of insomnia and curled up together in their shared bedroom, Jones would tell him stories as best he could, sometimes struggling to articulate what his mind was seeing but always speaking with such passion that Dan would be swept along with it nonetheless. He spoke as though he could see the music in his head, gesturing the shapes of his mixes into the night, explaining in a low murmur that the bass lines were always a dark, flowing blue and pre-recorded tracks were spiky shades of orange. Those were the times when he was, in Dan’s opinion at least, at his most beautiful. Half-asleep, slurring his words a little as he pointed to things Dan couldn’t see and telling him quietly why in his fantasy world a tea towel could become a map to the stars if it had to be, he was open and slightly ruffled and absolutely gorgeous. Then he would smile and shake his head, banishing the pictures for a little while, before curling up by Dan’s side and winding his fingers in the thin cotton of his shirt until he could eventually drift off.  
They were in public now, and a little too awake for the worlds to take on their usual impossible clarity, but Jones didn’t seem to care.  
“Yeah. Why not?” he said, the end of his pencil hovering near the corner of his mouth. “They could’ve had some kind of invisibility potion, right, and that was how they got in without us noticing. Or maybe they were all time travellers, and they came back here from the distant future to pull off the perfect heist.”  
Dan leaned forward, adopting his usual expression of sarcastic semi-interest.  
“Right. Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” he asked dryly. Jones laughed and turned back to the screen. He was about to reach out and press play for the fiftieth time when someone interrupted them.  
“Alright, Preach?”  
Nathan. Dan ground the heels of his palms against his eyelids, hoping that maybe, just this once, the idiot would leave him alone. He wanted to go home. He was still angry and shaken from having to go into the shop, the case was going nowhere, and he couldn’t figure out how his day had taken such a complete U-turn. Everything had started so well.  
Of course he was never going to get that lucky. The young man strolled over to the desk, pulling up a seat and throwing himself down right between Dan and Jones. A smile tugged briefly at the corners of Dan’s mouth at the expression of disgust on Jones’ face.  
“What do you want, Nathan?” he asked. Nathan grinned and held up a brown cardboard folder.  
“Forensics sent up the list of stuff from the shop,” he explained. “Claire told me to get it to you, and I reckon it’d be best to stay on her good side tonight, hey?”  
He grinned and winked, and Dan felt his stomach turn. If there was one thing he really didn’t need reminded of it was the fact that his sister was sleeping with Dan’s idiotic groupie. Jones caught his eye and sighed, sympathetic.  
“What you got for us then?” he asked Nathan, taking his attention away from Dan for the moment. When Nathan didn’t immediately react Jones simply plucked the folder from his hands and started flicking impatiently through it. The movement seemed to catch at the Idiot’s attention.  
“They didn’t take much,” he said hurriedly to Jones. “Actually, they took half the fucking stock, but none of the expensive stuff. Just little stones, yeah? Pretty high quality, lots of shiny glittery stuff, but the real good stuff just got left behind.”  
“Like that big stone by the counter,” murmured Jones half to himself, focused on the paper in front of him. Nathan looked a bit confused, but then again, thought Dan, he looked like that most of the time anyway. There was a short pause. Dan let it hang in the air for a few seconds more before he looked up in exasperation. He stared between the two other men.  
“Any ideas?” he prompted. “Theories? Wild guesses?”  
Jones opened his mouth and Dan held out his hand to silence him.  
“Jones, if I hear you mention time travel one more time I swear to god-”  
“I wasn’t gonna!” protested the younger man, running a hand through his hair innocently. “I just thought that…”  
Dan never got to hear what it was that his partner was actually going to say. Nathan interrupted him midsentence.  
“Know what I think?”  
Dan curled his hands into fists beneath the table. He’d managed to go years without actually punching Nathan. It seemed like a shame to break that streak now.  
“No, Nathan,” he growled between gritted teeth. “What do you think?”  
The young man leaned back in his chair, grinning his vacant grin and chewing exaggeratedly on his awful, sickly-sweet gum.  
“What I reckon, right, is that it was just done in a hurry. I mean think about it. They’ve got in, stroke of luck kind of thing, waved their guns about and just grabbed whatever they could see.”  
He sat back smugly. Dan felt Jones’ eyes on him and looked up to see his partner grinning. Dan gave a microscopic nod.  
“That,” he told Nathan, “is the stupidest idea I think you’ve ever had.”  
Nathan looked a little bewildered and Jones jumped in.  
“For a start, if they were taking whatever they could find then there’s no way they’d go for the little stuff. Some of those stones were like golf balls, but they left them behind. There’s no way you’d go into a store and not grab ‘em, they look like something out of a dragon’s hoard.”  
Dan suppressed a smile at Jones’ description, forcing himself to remain deadpan as he spoke to Nathan.  
“If they were in a hurry then they wouldn’t stop to take hostages,” added Dan. Jones shot him a sharp-toothed grin, struggling to hide his enjoyment. The rush of solving the puzzle had clearly gotten into him, and he seemed to be having a lot of fun picking flaws in Nathan’s argument. Dan had taught him well, apparently, and that thought made the older man grin as he continued.  
“It takes a lot of time and effort to tie up even one person, especially if they’re fighting back. Normally criminals just wave a gun around, grab what they want, and then run off before anyone’s stopped being in shock. If they stopped to tie up all the workers it means they were prepared to be there for a while if they had to be, which tells us…”  
He trailed off, the thoughts running through his head so fast that they were overtaking his mouth’s ability to articulate them, but Jones stepped smoothly in without even a second’s pause.  
“…tells us that they were looking for something specific. The only reason they weren’t there by the time we arrived was because they found it faster than they expected to. They also stopped to put a couple of spare masks on the hostages, just to throw us off for that bit longer.”  
“Even the fact that they wore balaclavas-”  
“And gloves,” put in Jones, checking a note in the file. Dan nodded in acknowledgement and continued to talk to Nathan, who was looking increasingly bewildered.  
“-and gloves, thank you, tells us that they had planned this, at least to an extent. And the security guard was in for an operation today, meaning that for the first time all year there was a gap in their security. So no, this wasn’t rushed. This was very much planned.”  
With that he turned away from Nathan and looked back down at his notes, taking a piece of paper from the file and skimming through it. It was a list of what had been taken, and it seemed that in this, at least, Nathan had been right. Everything that was missing was high-quality and cut small, some stones only a couple of millimetres in diameter.  
“Now we just need to know why they planned it,” he muttered, glancing down at his watch. He blinked when he saw the time. Clearly they’d spent even longer than he’d thought on the security footage; it was past time for him to be getting home. Standing up, he nudged Jones to get his attention, remembering only too late that Nathan was sitting there. He bit back the causal endearment resting on his tongue and coughed awkwardly as his partner looked up at him.  
“I, uh- that’s me away home,” he said hesitantly. “Do you want a lift back to your place?”  
He was certain he was blushing, though a fair part of that was due to anger as well as embarrassment. Jones glanced quickly at Nathan before nodding.  
“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks, Dan.”  
Nathan grinned, looking sleazily between them.  
“Alright, Preach, keep it in your pants at work,” he joked. “I’ll be out of here, anyway, I need to go meet Claire. You two can get to the bumming in peace.”  
He laughed at his own joke, and Dan took a deep breath. He wanted to hit him, but somehow managed to restrain himself. Nathan got up, kicking his chair into the path of another passing Idiot, and pointed over his shoulder at the two men.  
“Keep safe, yeah?” he teased, walking off with a grin. “Alright, peace and fucking, boys.”  
Dan turned back to the desk, picking up his things as Jones watched Nathan go.  
“Twat,” he said quietly. Dan huffed out a laugh and nodded.  
“You can say that again.”  
He picked up the paper bag from that morning and gestured for Jones to follow him as they walked out of the office. When they reached the stairs and Dan was sure there was nobody else around, he opened the bag and handed Jones a muffin. The younger man’s face lit up and he bit into it eagerly, humming appreciatively.  
“Mmm. Cheers, Dan, I’m starving.”  
“What do you want for dinner?” asked Dan with a smile as Jones slipped an arm around his waist, taking small bites of his muffin. “I was thinking pasta, but if you’d prefer something else…”  
Jones grinned and turned around, grabbing Dan’s lapels and pulling him down for a quick kiss. Secure in the knowledge that the staircase was deserted, Dan was free to reciprocate properly. The taste of chocolate lingered on Jones’ mouth, and he smiled into the kiss as Dan swiped the tip of his tongue tightly across his lips, tasting him, breathing him in. Dan could happily track his life in these stolen moments, tucked away in quiet corners of the building or walking around the streets together on their lunch break, a few seconds of blissful peace snatched from the jarring chaos of the rest of the world. After a few more seconds they broke apart, though Jones stayed close to him. His blue eyes were wide and shining, and Dan’s heart fluttered slightly at the look of pure adoration on the younger man’s face. He didn’t understand how anyone could look at him and see something worth that expression.  
“C’mon,” said Jones, tugging at Dan’s arm. “Let’s go home. You’re making dinner.”  
“Oh, come on,” complained Dan as he got into the car. “You’re better at cooking than I am.”  
“Not at pasta. I can only do breakfasts and snacks. I once tried to make pasta and burned it.”  
“How the fuck do you burn pasta?” asked Dan, staring at him in confusion. Jones shrugged a little helplessly.  
The drive home didn’t take long, especially as it was to the tune of one of Dan’s favourite songs. Jones finished his muffin quickly and looked imploringly at Dan until he relented and gave him the other one as well. Every so often he would break off small pieces and offer them to Dan, and between them it only took a couple of minutes to finish it. The chocolate tasted of Jones’ lips.  
Jones went straight to his DJ decks when they arrived back at the flat, switching everything on and filling the small building with sound before Dan had even finished taking his jacket off. When Dan tried to question him, shouting to be heard over the heavy bass line carrying a jumble of confused sounds along with it, Jones had explained vaguely that there had been an idea nagging at him ever since the single gunshot in the building earlier. Dan didn’t quite understand; it was something to do with the 1812 overture using cannons, but “with an electro-punk flair and some Green Day thrown in as well”. When Jones started talking like that he’d learned it was best to just leave him be. Dan wasn’t worried about the music, either; he could more or less tune it out by that point, so he just nodded and left the younger man to it while he cooked dinner.  
He really was good at making pasta. There wasn’t much Dan could do, and he hadn’t had all that much practice at cooking, but the few meals he could make he was able to do blindfolded. It was less than fifteen minutes before he had two plates of pasta and tomato sauce steaming on the counter.  
“Jones!” he yelled, and after a moment the music faded out and the younger man stuck his head through the door.  
“Yeah?” he asked. His hair was messed up from dancing about with his ridiculously oversized headphones. He looked more like he’d just come back from the gym than like someone who’d been listening to music.  
“Dinner,” replied Dan, nodding towards the plates. Jones grinned and kissed Dan on the cheek as he made his way over to the plates. Dan relaxed; he knew that Jones wanted him around, the logical part of him was perfectly aware of that, but there was still a worry nagging at the back of his mind that one of these days the younger man would turn around and tell him to leave, that it had all been a game. He’d never told Jones, and he wasn’t entirely sure if it was just the younger man’s naturally affectionate nature or a conscious attempt to reassure him, but there was always something to tell him to stay. It might be a touch on the arm, a gentle kiss in the morning, or just asking Dan to listen to his song demos for him, but it was enough.  
“Want to watch a film?” asked Jones over his shoulder. “We’ve got that one you found last week, you said you liked that.”  
Dan nodded.  
“Sounds good.”  
If he was honest he couldn’t even remember what film Jones was talking about, but he was tired and any excuse to lie on the sofa for a couple of hours was something he was definitely interested in. He picked up his plate and followed Jones through to the living room, putting his pasta to one side for a minute or two while he slipped the disc into the player. He vaguely remembered he plot of the film; it was a generic sort of action movie, with lots of explosions and intentionally memorable one-liners. Nothing too intelligent, just bad guys that needed to be shot and a pointless relationship going on the side. Just the sort of thing to watch when you’re in no mood to focus on plot.  
He made his way back over to the sofa, picking up his pasta and lying down. Jones perched at the other end of the sofa, wolfing down his pasta like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He always ate quickly. Dan had never found a way to ask why without sounding intrusive, so he just steered clear of the subject.  
After about an hour or so, during which the main character managed to do an awful lot of dramatic hiding and skidding down corridors, Dan was almost ready to fall asleep. Jones had somehow inched his way along until he was lying on top of Dan, between his legs with his head resting on the taller man’s chest. Dan sighed, and Jones lifted his head with a smirk.  
“Not as interesting as you remembered?” he asked. Dan tried to shrug, but it was surprisingly difficult to do so without sending at least one of them falling to the floor.  
“I’m just tired,” he said, wincing as he did so. How many years had he spent using that as an excuse? I’m just tired. I’m just depressed, drunk, suicidal, bored, unwell, in the closet, bullied. But for once it was true. He really was just tired. The thought was unexpectedly cheering. A smile flitted briefly across his face, and Jones propped himself up so he could look at him better.  
“What you thinking about?” asked the younger man with a smile. Dan shook his head and didn’t answer. His gaze flickered to Jones’ parted lips for a moment, and he smiled faintly.  
“Kiss me.”  
Jones laughed, leaning down until they were only millimetres apart.  
“I thought you were never gonna ask,” he whispered, bringing their lips together with a sigh. Dan reached up and wrapped his arms around Jones, pulling him closer. Jones nipped playfully at his lip in response, deepening the kiss with ease. Warmth was swirling in Dan’s stomach, and he moaned lightly against the younger man, hoping that he would get the hint. Despite being together for over two months, they hadn’t gone further than kissing. Dan was certain that Jones wanted to- he had seen the evidence more than once- but every time it felt like things were going to get serious the younger man backed off. Maybe that night would be different.  
Jones pressed down against Dan, moving his hips forward slightly, and Dan’s breath hitched for a moment. He broke reluctantly away from the kiss and turned his attention to the pale skin at Jones’ neck, nipping and sucking as the younger man gasped. A dark bruise was already beginning to form as he moved away, and Dan ran the tips of his fingers gently over the mark. He leaned back into the kiss, letting Jones run his hands through his hair and control where things were going for the time being. Fingernails scratched lightly at his scalp and he rocked his hips upwards, the material of his trousers beginning to strain slightly. Jones grinned against him and tugged lightly at Dan’s hair, making him gasp loudly. All too soon, though, Jones was putting his hand on Dan’s chest and pushing him away.  
“Dan… not tonight, okay?” he said, almost apologetically. A soft whine fell from Dan’s lips, but he didn’t press the point. This was one conversation he wasn’t going to have when he was this tired and frustrated. There was too much that could be misinterpreted, and Dan knew only too well where that route led. So he nodded, swallowing and trying to think of something else.  
Jones sighed, sounding relieved, and Dan felt guilty for a moment. It was Jones’ call, and he had to respect that. It was just har- difficult, he corrected himself, think of something else- to be caught up in this constant dance of moving together and pulling apart when all he wanted was to press closer. Then Jones pressed a soft kiss to his cheek and snuggled down against his chest, eyes fluttering shut, and Dan relaxed. It would be okay. He wrapped one arm around Jones’ back, holding him snugly, and looked back at the screen as the hero leapt from an exploding building.  
Trying his best to focus on the screen, Dan soon found that the film simply wasn’t holding his attention. He sighed and reached behind him for the packet of cigarettes he knew he’d find on the floor there, as well as an old lighter. Shaking the packet open, he took a cigarette and lit it with one hand- one of the few skills he had was his ability to light a cigarette or open a bottle or can with either hand- before taking a long drag, watching the smoke curl away towards the ceiling. He stayed there for what felt like hours, gazing upwards as the air became slightly hazy from the smoke. His mind wandered, though he couldn’t say exactly where to; there weren’t thoughts in his head so much as vague ideas, half-formed concepts and sensations popping like bubbles just out of reach. Eventually, after the last of the cigarette had crumbled to ash, Dan closed his eyes. His chest rising and falling to the rhythm of Jones’ breathing, soft strands of the younger man’s hair twisted lightly between his fingers, Dan let himself drift slowly towards sleep.


	4. Hallo Spaceboy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for how long it took to get this chapter up. School caught up with me a bit, then there were a handful of bad days thrown in as well when I couldn't string two sentences together, much less a coherent plot. It's here now though, so hopefully you'll enjoy :)

Many beautiful things in nature have been assigned colours- sea-green, sunset orange, and so on- but London mornings were a colour in their own right, a kind of watered-down grey that snuck in through the cracks in both curtains and eyelids, forcing consciousness into the minds of even the deepest sleepers.  
Dan was not a deep sleeper, but he was proud of that sentence. He’d thought it up years previously, back when he still enjoyed his life and had been confident he had a future as a writer or a poet rather than an angry ex-alcoholic working as a detective. God, he’d been a pretentious teenager. But as he looked around at the messy, lived-in flat, with the comforting weight of his partner pressed against his chest, he decided he rather liked where he’d ended up.  
He took a deep breath, smiling as the soft scent of Jones’ shampoo and deodorant curled upwards and caught in his nose. It was a comforting smell, perhaps second only to coffee on the list of the best things Dan could wake up to. The younger man sighed in his sleep, sending soft vibrations rippling through Dan’s chest, and nuzzled up against the taller man’s chin. Dan pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head, breathing in the smell of soap and sweat that he’d come to associate so strongly with home, and cautiously tried to move. There was no way he could stand up without waking Jones, but it was early and there was still a chance he could catch another half an hour of sleep while Dan got ready.  
“Don’t you dare,” mumbled a voice against Dan’s shoulder. He looked down to see Jones stir slightly, turning his head and pressing a sloppy kiss to his neck.  
“G’ morning,” he continued sleepily, smiling. Dan didn’t reply, simply stared up at him. Once again he was struck by how beautiful the younger man was, even when he was rumpled and unshaven and dressed in the previous day’s clothes. Jones just shook his head, apparently having finally grown used to Dan’s tendency to stare off into space for long periods of time, and moved in to kiss him. His stubble dragged lazily across Dan’s chin and the older man smiled and pressed back into the kiss, wrapping long fingers around Jones’ sides to support him there. For a long while they didn’t move, except for the slow movement of lips as they explored each other. The tension which had risen again in Dan’s chest eased away a little, until he felt comfortable enough to pull away. Jones was grinning, his lips and cheeks both flushed pink. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Dan’s mouth.  
“Okay, up,” he said, tapping his sides. Jones squirmed, pinning him down against the sofa and lying back on his chest.  
“Nope,” he replied. “You’re staying here while I have a little sleep.”  
“C’mon,” insisted Dan, pushing him carefully away and swinging his legs over the side of the sofa. Jones sat up reluctantly, a cushion in his lap, and pouted, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Dan shook his head, refusing to let the younger man make him feel guilty. There was plenty of other stuff he could use as ammunition if it came to properly guilt-tripping him. This was hardly worth bothering about.  
“I need a shower,” he grumbled, the only explanation he was willing to give. Jones sighed heavily and dragged a hand down his back, tugging at the hem of his shirt.  
“Oh, please? You know I can’t sleep without you.”  
It was a cheesy line, but there was a ring of truth to it. For the first couple of weeks, when Dan didn’t know what Jones was comfortable with- didn’t even know what he himself was comfortable with- and was still sleeping on the sofa, he would often jerk awake at three in the morning to the sound of Jones sneaking into the room. Most nights he didn’t let on that he was awake, content to lie in the dark and watch Jones’ silhouette moving on the other side of the room. His breathing would quicken slightly as he watched Jones’ fingers dancing expertly over the equipment in front of him, music echoing faintly from the oversized headphones he wore. Dan almost always fell asleep again before Jones left, but he knew that he wasn’t dreaming because the following morning Jones would show up at breakfast with dark circles under his eyes. Dan told him once that it made him look like a panda, which hadn’t exactly gone down well. Turns out that the younger man was actually pretty insecure about the way he looked, and even when he was practically dead on his feet from lack of sleep he had remarkably good aim.  
Dan shook his head and stood up.  
“I need a shower. Besides, it’s time to get up anyway.”  
“We’ve got another half an hour!” protested Jones, somehow managing to be indignant even when wearing yesterday’s clothes and no socks or shoes. Dan checked his watch.  
“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Maybe you could use the time to have a shower as well. For someone with that may hair products, you don’t seem to wash very often.”  
Jones stuck out his tongue and slumped back down with a soft grunt, lying on his stomach and wrapping his arms around the pillow Dan had been sleeping on.  
“Shows what you know. My hair is magic, it’s absorbed exactly the right amounts of all my hair products. Now the only thing I need to do with it is run a hand through it and suddenly it’s perfect.”  
Dan stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds.  
“Jones. Shower.”  
The younger man opened one eye sleepily, shooting him a crooked smile.  
“Maybe I could join you,” he teased. “Bet you’d like that.”  
 _More than anything_ , Dan thought, and he felt warmth curl near his groin as his body decided it agreed. Out loud he simply shook his head with a quiet laugh and walked towards the bathroom, leaving Jones crawling reluctantly off of the sofa.  
The mental image of Jones joining him in the shower refused to leave Dan alone as he turned on the hot water, quickly peeling off his clothes and stepping under the stream. His shower took a little longer than usual, but that was okay. He had the time to spare. Besides, he could hardly be blamed for it. Not when the thoughts of Jones, all taut muscles and sharp angles, dropping to his knees with a knowing smirk, were so vivid in his mind. Not when the warm water was almost exactly the temperature of a human mouth against his skin. Not when he was almost certain that, just as he was approaching his limit, he’d heard a choked-off cry from the bedroom. The sound of Jones’ voice, even if it might have been imagined, was enough to drive him over the edge.  
He felt a little guilty for a while but, he reasoned as he got dressed, surely it was better that he was thinking about his partner than some stranger? And anyway, he was pretty sure it counted as stress relief. He could claim medical reasons. Or he could call it therapy, something to keep his dopamine levels up. That sounded right, and definitely believable. With these thoughts bubbling in his mind and his muscles feeling pleasantly loose and relaxed, there was a small smirk on his lips as he walked into the kitchen; a smirk which only grew wider as he noticed Jones had changed his trousers. Not the shirt, just the trousers.  
He didn’t voice his suspicions, filing them away at the very back of his mind for later examination and making his way to the kettle.  
“Coffee?” he asked, glancing over to where Jones was sitting. The younger man was eating toast and flicking through a magazine Dan had never heard of, one knee drawn up to his chest as he licked a stray smear of jam from his fingers.  
“Hm?” he replied, looking up towards Dan with two fingers still in his mouth. That one, too, was stored in a nice corner of Dan’s mind. He coughed and tried to speak again without his voice giving anything away.  
“Want a coffee?”  
“Yeah, cheers,” said Jones with a quick grin. “Toast’s over by the fridge, I made you some.”  
With that he turned back to his magazine, humming quietly. Dan recognised the song, but he couldn’t quite place it. Knowing that it was going to annoy him until he remembered the name, but too proud to ask, he busied himself making the coffees. He even found Jones’ favourite mug at the back of the cupboard.  
“Here you go,” he murmured quietly, putting the drink down on the table. Jones smiled and leaned back in his chair, resting his head against Dan’s chest and looking up at him.  
“I love you,” he said matter-of-factly, his dark fringe flopping across his forehead. Dan smiled and pressed a kiss to his forehead, which earned him a low murmur of appreciation.  
“Of course you do,” he said, moving away to sit down opposite the younger man. “I’m very loveable.”  
“Practically a care bear,” said Jones with a giggle, closing the magazine with a soft thump and pushing it to one side. “So, what do you think?”  
“What?” asked Dan, thrown by the sudden change of subject. Knowing Jones he could be getting asked for his opinion on anything, from Jones’ newest jeans to the pattern of the wallpaper. It was almost impossible to fathom how the younger man’s mind worked sometimes.  
“The case,” Jones clarified, taking a sip of his drink. “What do you think they were planning?”  
“Honestly? No idea. I mean, it all certainly looked professional,” said Dan, looking thoughtfully down at the table and lightly tracing the patterns in the wood. “They were very organised.”  
“It was like a movie,” agreed the younger man. Dan nodded.  
“Exactly. But I have no idea what they want the ending to be.”  
Jones nodded slowly, staring off into space the way he always did when he was thinking. A few seconds later his phone buzzed. It took him a moment to get the device out of his pocket- the jeans he’d chosen for that day were even more figure-hugging than usual, meaning Dan was probably going to have to spend most of his day trying his best not to stare at his partner’s arse- but when he did he answered immediately.  
“It’s the station,” he mouthed in response to Dan’s questioning glance. Dan nodded and tried to piece the conversation together from Jones’ replies. It didn’t get him much information.  
“What did they want?” he asked after the call was over. Jones grinned and nodded towards Dan’s phone, lying on the table beside his wallet.  
“You’ll find out in a second. Apparently they tried calling you earlier but you didn’t answer, so they decided to tell me for once. You’ll be getting a text or something to come an’ get me any second now.”  
Dan shook his head, a tiny grin on his lips. He always found that a little funny, the fact that they would both get the calls. Nobody at the station knew about the two of them; well, nobody except Claire, and both men were pretty sure she hadn’t told anyone. Dan was usually the one to get told about cases based on the assumption that he would probably pick Jones up on his way in and explain in the car. In fairness, they weren’t exactly wrong. They were just quite far from being right.  
Sure enough, his screen lit up with a text message barely a minute later. He read it aloud while Jones grinned.  
“Need you at station ASAP. Jones will fill you in,” he read. Jones stood up and shrugged on his jacket, tossing Dan the car keys.  
“Come on then,” he said. “Get moving. You’ve got a dashing sidekick to go and collect.”  
Dan didn’t even try to dignify that with an answer, just finished his coffee and headed for the door. Jones fell into step behind him, pausing as he locked the door.  
“I should really add your name to this,” he said absently. Dan felt as though he’d been punched in the chest, and it took his a few seconds to realise that the emotion was one of overwhelming relief. Such an offhand comment, but the one thing Dan had wanted to hear without even knowing he’d needed it. This was home now.  
Jones was oblivious to Dan’s reaction to the simple statement. He slid into the passenger seat of the car with a cheery grin, putting their mix into the CD player but turning the volume down low so he didn’t have to raise his voice. David Bowie sang softly in the background while Jones explained what was going on.  
“There’s been another robbery,” he said. “Hardware shop.”  
“So? We’re CID, we don’t do that.”  
“Yeah, but they think it’s the same guys from the diamond place.”  
Dan laughed, a little coldly.  
“Lowered their standards a bit, haven’t they?”  
“I know, it’s a bit stupid, but we’re to go and see just in case it is them.”  
Jones’ words were accompanied by a vaguely apologetic shrug. Dan sighed, leaning back against his seat as they pulled up at a red light.  
“I hate robbery cases,” he complained. “It’s all talking to idiots who don’t understand how being a detective works.”  
“They’re not that bad,” laughed Jones. “They’re just people.”  
“Oh yeah? I bet you a tenner that at least one of them says something straight out of a cop show, and then I’ll have to hit them and we’ll all get in trouble.”  
“Not a tenner. Loser does the dishes for a week.”  
“Deal. In fact, I’ll make it two weeks if you want.”  
“You’re confident,” said Jones. Dan nodded emphatically.  
“It’s the one truth about people. They’re guaranteed to be absolute idiots about at least one thing in their lives, and it’s usually when they’re talking to me.”  
Jones shook his head with a fond smile, skipping through a few tracks before turning the music up again.  
“Shh,” he said. “Let the magic of Jagger calm you.”  
That was enough to make Dan smile, and he drove on in silence for a while. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jones dancing to the song.  
“Dan?” he said after a few minutes, checking his phone. “I’ve got another message, they say we’ve got to go straight to the shop.”  
“Address?”  
Jones told him, and Dan changed course, complaining under his breath as he did so.  
“Why would they rob a hardware shop anyway?” he asked. “They’ve got the diamonds, what more do they want? Are they going to plant them or something? Build a display case?”  
Jones giggled, the familiar glazed expression in his eyes telling Dan that the younger man had wandered off into the realm of fantasy again.  
“Imagine if diamonds actually did grow on trees,” he said. “D’you reckon they’d still be valuable?”  
That one brought Dan up short. He wasn’t used to Jones’ questions being that intelligent.  
“I… I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I doubt it. If they were everywhere then there would be no point placing a value on them, because it would change all the time. What if there was a diamond famine or something?”  
Jones shook his head, grinning.  
“Nah, I think we’d still use them like money. They’re shiny. People like shiny things. As a species we’re kind of like violent magpies.”  
“Wasn’t that the name of your mate’s band?” joked Dan. Jones laughed.  
“Shut up. I know it was a shit gig, but can you maybe let it go?” he said. “I mean, it’s not like first dates are always meant to be perfect. The trick is to get past the mess you made first time round and then try again.”  
“He was plastered,” insisted Dan. “Your mate was trying to sing when he was blind drunk, that’s beyond a shit gig. I thought he was going to throw up on me.”  
“Alright, alright. No need to rub it in,” said Jones in a mock-offended tone. “Look, we’re here now. Go complain to someone else.”  
“Happily.”  
Dan got out of the car, breathing in the smell of exhaust fumes and drizzle and turning it into armour, shrugging on his police persona like it was his favourite coat. The shop was huge, practically a warehouse, and there was a small crowd gathered by the door. Fifteen, maybe twenty people, most of them wearing company uniform. They all looked nervous, which made Dan feel a little better. Nervous people tended not to try and tell him how to do his job.  
Jones was already walking across the car park, confidence rippling through him. Dan always felt proud when he saw his partner like that, so assured in his abilities to do the job in front of him. By the time he had caught up, Jones had already found him the key witness. It was a knack he had- he could tell who was least likely to make stuff up or panic. It made things a lot less stressful for Dan.  
“Go for that one,” Jones murmured quietly, standing close to his side. “Guy in the hat, wears glasses. He’s your best bet. I’ll deal with the nervous ones, herd them in a bit.”  
“Thanks,” muttered Dan, before putting on his best authoritative voice and walking over to the man Jones had pointed out.  
“Can I have a word please?” he said, doing his best to sound confident without being intimidating. It was a balance he was finding it tricky to get right.  
“Yes, of- of course,” said the man, pushing his glasses up his nose. Dan nodded and took out his notebook.  
“Okay. Can I ask your name?”   
“Stephen,” he replied. “Stephen Hutton.”  
Dan scribbled down the name under the heading ‘The One In The Orange Apron’ and looked around. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jones talking to the rest of the group, telling them that it was under control and they would be talking to everyone shortly.  
“Could you tell me what happened?” asked Dan, dragging his gaze back to the man in front of him. Stephen nodded nervously.  
“No need to be frightened, Mr Hutton,” said Dan. “It’s all routine. What happened?”  
“Well, we w-were just opening up for the morning,” he said quietly. “That’s why there aren’t many customers here, we don’t normally get the rush until about 11. The lights went out, all at once, and the tills as well. I thought there had been a power cut or something, but suddenly there’s these men with guns bursting in through the doors, and-”  
“How many?” said Dan, interrupting him. Stephen looked confused for a moment.  
“How many men?”  
“Yes.”  
“Four or five, I think. I don’t know, it all happened so quickly.”  
Dan nodded, trying to project a sort of reassuring image.  
“I understand, but anything you remember could be important, even if it seems insignificant. You said they were carrying guns?”  
“Yes th-that’s right.”  
“I see. Did you actually see the guns, or were you just told that they had them?”  
Stephen shook his head, looking distressed.  
“I saw- well, not the gun, not as such, but they were definitely holding something and they told me that’s what it was. And they told us to all get on the floor or they’d shoot us.”  
Dan was scribbling notes as he spoke, which Stephen kept craning his neck to see. Dan angled himself subtly away.  
“Okay. And you did what they said?”  
“Of course. They had guns.”  
“Or they told you they did,” added Dan. Stephen shook his head, clearly confused.  
“Yeah, I- I suppose.”  
“What did they take?”  
“What?”  
Dan was beginning to grow impatient.  
“When you phoned us you said that this was a robbery. I’m not asking for a full inventory- well, actually, I am, but not yet. You must have some idea of what was taken. If you could give that to us just now we might be able to make some headway with it, start up a preliminary investigation while we wait for you to take stock properly.”  
Stephen nodded, anxiously pushing his glasses back up his nose and fiddling with one of the metal legs.  
“Yes, I think they took fertilisers mostly.”  
“Fertilisers?”  
“Yeah, definitely fertilisers. About six different brands. And they took a lot of bleach, and practically all our duct tape.”  
Dan didn’t comment, but wrote down the short list. He was about to walk away when a thought struck him.  
“You said there was a power cut. After they’d gone, did the power come back on?”  
“Yeah. Why?”  
The notebook gave a satisfying thud as Dan closed it.  
“Oh, nothing. Just making sure we get all the details. Thank you, Stephen, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”  
Stephen nodded and made to leave, then hesitated.  
“Um… aren’t you going to take DNA samples?” he asked. “Or- or scan us all with UV light or something?”  
Dan shook his head.  
“You watch too much TV,” he replied, pocketing his notebook and making his way over to where Jones was leaning against a bollard.  
“God, I hate being professional,” he grumbled, shaking some of the tension out of his shoulders. “They’re so boring, and really difficult to talk to. Why do we have to do this?”  
Jones grinned.  
“We don’t. Others are on their way, we can let them deal with it while we go check security.”  
Dan nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets.  
“Oh, that reminds me,” he said as an afterthought. “You’re doing the dishes next week.”  
Looking around at the small crowd with a sigh, he continued after a short pause.  
“I never have the heart to tell these people that our entire forensics team consists of my sister and maybe three lab assistants.”  
The laughter that came from Jones at that comment sounded almost unnaturally loud in the quiet car park, drawing a few angry looks from their group of witnesses. Dan spotted a couple of police cars pulling up and waved to the drivers to get their attention.  
“Go and talk to them,” he said to the officers, pointing over towards the assembled workers. “Jones and I are going to go see if they have any security cameras.”  
He didn’t even wait for an answer before turning and walking inside, Jones only a couple of steps behind him. They found the security cameras pretty quickly, but there weren’t many of them. There were only four feeds, split across two monitors. Jones nodded as he looked at them.  
“Makes sense,” he said. When Dan shot him a quizzical glance he elaborated, gesturing around them.  
“Look at this compared to the jewellery shop,” he said. “They’re hardly going to spend all that much on security.”  
“Point taken,” replied Dan, moving over to the screens and pressing a few buttons hopefully. “Doubt we’re going to get much off it. There’s mostly just a load of footage of empty aisles, and then- yep, thought so.”  
“What is it?” asked Jones, pressing right up against him and peering over Dan’s shoulder at the screen. Trying to ignore the feeling of Jones standing so close, Dan rewound the footage and played it back at high speed. Grainy images of the shop flashed past the screen, eventually going black. The time stamp told them that the power had gone approximately an hour and a half previously.  
“Rewind it a bit?” asked Jones. Dan did, and paused it when he saw what Jones had obviously spotted before. Just before the blackout a figure had hurried across the screen towards what Dan assumed was the main fuse box. He fiddled with it for a while, and obviously whatever he was doing worked because the screens cut out a second or two later.  
Dan would normally have been overjoyed- after all, video evidence was definitely one of the more helpful types of evidence when it came to cases like this- but the man on the screen was wearing a balaclava.  
“Fuckin’ balaclavas,” said Jones, right in Dan’s ear. He had to suppress a shiver.  
“We’ll take the tapes anyway,” he mumbled awkwardly, pushing Jones gently away. “We might be able to get some idea of his height, age, that sort of thing.”  
“Good plan,” agreed the younger man, pressing a brief kiss to his cheek. “See, this is why you’re the brains and I’m the looks. Perfect team.”  
“Who says we can’t both be both?” replied Dan, and Jones shrugged.  
“Dunno. People, probably.”  
“Which people?”  
“Just people. You know, in general.”  
Dan laughed and let Jones lead the way back outside. He paused at the door.  
“I’m not talking to any more of them,” he said firmly. Jones laughed and tugged at his hand.  
“Alright, I’m not gonna make you. How about we just get back to the station? They can finish up here, and I’ll make coffees while you wait for the proper inventory. You won’t even have to look at them on the way out if you don’t want to.”  
Dan smiled faintly.  
“Good.”


	5. Fashion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter chapter than the previous couple, but this does mean the next one should be a sensible length. Also I'm not sure when I'll next have internet, so I thought I should play it safe.

“Twenty points if I can get it in his mug.”

“What?”

Dan turned to look at his partner, confused and grumpy. He was bored out of his mind, and he didn’t see any signs of things getting interesting any time soon. They had no evidence, so proper witness statements, and they were still trying to get permission from some stubborn security company to take in the tapes. Dan had just spent half an hour on the phone with a very stupid man who flat refused to do anything without first being shown a warrant, even after Dan threatened to arrest him for obstructing the investigation. He couldn’t actually do that, of course, but it usually worked if you just left the possibility hanging in the air. It freaked people out a bit.

Jones, on the other hand, was grinning and holding up a small ball of crumpled-up paper. Dan vaguely recognised it as being a memo he’d discarded a day or so previously; something about a work dinner that he had absolutely no interest in going to. Jones had probably picked it out of the recycling.

“I said, twenty points if I can get this in his mug,”

He pointed across the room to one of their colleagues, an older man who always seemed to be wearing the same grey suit and who had cast several disapproving glances their way ever since they’d started working together. It was no secret that he was the office’s resident homophobe; he was proud of it, often loudly declaring that ‘such things’ should be banned whenever the subject came up. After same-sex marriage had been legalised he’d done nothing but complain about it for a week. Dan had already been at a low point, and hearing that every day had almost destroyed him. Looking back on it with Jones by his side he’d finally found the strength to laugh.

“What points?” he asked, swivelling his chair to look, grateful for the distraction. Jones pondered this for a moment, shrugging.

“I dunno. Just felt like points should be on offer. Buy me a tube of smarties?”

“Deal.”

A mischievous grin tugged at Jones’ lips and he lifted his arm, checking quickly to make sure nobody was watching. The coast was clear. With a flick of his wrist he sent the paper soaring across the office in a perfect arc, stifling a sigh as it bounced off the edge of the desk and fell to the floor. Dan laughed quietly and turned back to his desk.

“Better luck next time,” he teased, shuffling his papers and trying to decide what to do next. There was really nowhere they could go until the interviews came back, and his mind just wasn’t working. He wanted a wall to pin things to, but even if he had one- they could use the room from when they were solving the kidnapping cases, he supposed- he really didn’t have anything to pin on it. Suddenly Jones’ arm snaked past him and plucked a sticky note from the block. Dan looked across at him in exasperation.

“Oh, come on. Give it up.”

“Never,” replied the younger man with a smirk, crumpling the note into a ball. He spun and tossed the paper in one fluid movement, and Dan watched in slightly stunned silence as it flew through the air to land, with a quiet plop, straight in the other man’s mug.

Jones’ mouth dropped open. He stared at Dan in a perfect mixture of shock and glee, looking like he was about to burst out laughing any second.

"I did it," whispered the younger man, blue eyes sparkling with glee. Dan actually had to bite his lip to hold back his laughter. Jones' sudden, shocked giggle made him look away, momentarily overwhelmed by the simple fact that Jones was there and was his. He still struggled to believe it occasionally.

"Dan?" asked Jones quietly, laughter softening the edges of his words. He moved his head, tilting it at increasingly awkward angles until Dan met his eyes. Dizzying, shimmering blue, fixed steadily on the dark brown ones Dan had never really liked no matter how often Jones told him he was beautiful. The juxtaposition never struck him as odd; their eyes reflected their personalities, and he was certain that Jones would always shine far brighter than he did. And he was okay with that. He knew, even if Jones didn’t, that the younger man was a shining star, the brightest point in an increasingly dull world, and that Dan didn’t at all deserve him.

"You alright?" continued the younger man with an encouraging smile. Dan nodded slowly, picking his next words with care. There was a lot he wanted to say, a lot that he wanted to do and feel, and it was difficult for him to articulate any of that while in the middle of the office.

"I really want to kiss you right now," he said cautiously. Jones' smile broadened and he pressed closer, putting his hand teasingly on the taller man's thigh. Dan shifted slightly against it, pressing up slightly against the warmth of Jones’ hand. His fingers traced careful, lingering patterns against the worn denim of Dan's jeans. 

"Then why don't you?"

"What?"

Dan was caught a little off guard by the bold statement. After all, Jones had been the one who'd suggested they keep things quiet in the first place. The way he'd put it, they were safest not telling anyone because technically Jones was still new and it could be misinterpreted as some sort of coercion. Perhaps worse, he could be assigned a different partner. The thought of his Jones having to work with any of the homophobic twats who occupied the rest of the office had been more than enough for Dan to make up his mind. The suggestion that they could just start kissing in the middle of the office, though incredibly tempting, was a pretty big change.

"I, uh, don't think that's a good idea," said Dan, pushing Jones' hand carefully away. He felt bad immediately at the crestfallen expression on his partner's face and hurriedly tried to back out of it.

"No, Jones, I didn't mean-"

"It's okay," replied Jones, interrupting him. He was worrying at his lower lip, tugging the skin between his teeth and mumbling his words around it, like a nervous teenager. "We said we wouldn't. It was stupid of me. I just-"

He sighed heavily, and Dan checked quickly to see if anyone was looking before reaching under the desk and carefully threading his fingers between Jones'. The small chest of drawers made sure they were shielded from the view of any passing Idiots. The younger man gave a small smile as Dan squeezed his hand, running the pad of his thumb across his knuckles with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"No, listen. Not yet- not here, anyway- but I've just remembered that I left some very important documents in my locker. So I will be in the locker room for quite some time."

It was a gamble, and he realised was holding his breath. For an agonising few seconds there was nothing, just the blank look on Jones’ face as he tried to process what Dan had just said, sorting through all the possible interpretations of the sentence just in case he’d got it horribly wrong. Slowly, though, the familiar mischievous grin crept back onto Jones’ lips, his eyes lighting up. He took a moment to drag his gaze slowly across every inch of Dan’s body, the tip of his tongue darting out briefly as he did so. Dan wriggled in his seat slightly, absolutely certain he was flushed crimson from at least the neck up. Jones giggled and Dan was suddenly filled once more with the urge to move, to grab Jones by his long hair and pull him into a hard kiss, and to hell with the consequences.

Instead he just coughed awkwardly and stood up, fighting the urge to adjust his trousers as he did so. Jones grinned, and the look on his face told him that yes, he knew exactly what Dan had been implying.

“I’ll, uh,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder. “I’ll be at my locker.”

Jones nodded.

“I might have to go grab a coffee in a minute,” he replied casually, smile still in place. Dan was certain that at any moment somebody was going to look over and guess what was happening, so with that a final abrupt nod he hurried out of the door. The sound of Jones chuckling followed him out of the room.  
He had to fight the urge to take the stairs two at a time as he made his way down to the locker rooms. He walked slowly and deliberately, practically counting his steps in an attempt to focus on anything other than the persistent, nagging thought at the back of his mind that being with Jones had more or less reduced them both to a couple of clingy, horny teenagers. More shocking, really, was that he was enjoying it.  
Before meeting Jones he'd been... well, immediately before meeting Jones he'd been a suicidal alcoholic who was taking a six-month leave of absence from his work because he'd shot the man who'd killed his partner. Even before then, though, there had been something about himself that he wasn't quite at ease with. Maybe it was the way that he looked at the world, as though everything was covered in a fine grey mist, like London drizzle in mid-November. Nothing stood out as exciting, or interesting, or even acceptable. It had all been so boring, almost offensively so, a fact which was only heightened by the pathetic attempts at originality dotted throughout it. He'd thought, once, when he was well on his way to the bottom of his second bottle of whiskey, that perhaps the best way to describe the way he saw everything was like commuters on the tube. Hundreds of bland, boring men would make the same journey every day, all dressed in the same dark suit but with depressingly bright ties. 'Look at me,' they seemed to beg. 'I'm a fun guy really, I promise.' It was pathetic.  
The worst part, though, was that Dan was one of them. He fought so hard not to be, constructing a wall of anger and cynicism and bitter, bitter hatred, but still the Idiots were drawn to him, like moths to a flamethrower. He wanted nothing more than to get rid of them, to set the world to rights- or, at least, to wrongs he could actually understand- but instead all he got was praise, hollow and shallow. After a while he'd realised that the hatred was his equivalent to the novelty tie. There was no credibility to it; all it would ever be was a desperate cry for attention, for the recognition that he was different to the rest.  
But then there was Jones. Jones, who was a beacon of madness and noise and purest starlight. Jones, who could solve crimes by coming at them sideways with a hundred different crazy theories until eventually the whole thing unravelled for him. Jones, who for some inexplicable reason had fallen in love with the angry mess of a man Dan knew he had been.  
With these thoughts lurking at the back of his mind, Dan found that he'd arrived at the locker room almost without realising it. His feet knew the way, an odd kind of muscle memory that had helped him through most of his time in the police force. He could probably find his way around the station drunk and blindfolded, stopping to make coffee on the way. If the rumours Nathan had been spreading were true- though Dan hoped to god they weren't- he apparently once had.  
Jones was waiting for him when he reached the lockers. Either he'd sprinted the whole way, taking the back stairs two at a time, or the younger man was magic. It was hard to tell either way, because the second Dan walked through the door he was kissing him hard enough to leave both of them utterly breathless.  
Dan's hand went automatically to the shorter man's back, pulling him as close as possible, not breaking the kiss for a second. The feeling of Jones' lips on his was beautifully intoxicating, like the bubbles in champagne. A tune floated absently through his mind, a half-forgotten song he hadn't listened to in years, brought back to the forefront of his mind by the taste of his partner's mouth.  
 _You drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola..._  
It was just so perfectly them, Dan getting drunk on Jones' sweetness, and it annoyed him that he couldn't remember the song's name. He remembered the tune though, and hummed vaguely against the younger man, who smiled. Dan would never get tired of that; the way Jones' mouth curled up, his slightly crooked teeth grazing against Dan's lower lip, growing decidedly less innocent within seconds. Dan broke away for a moment to catch his breath, but it was snatched away again in an instant as Jones looked up at him. His shining blue eyes were darker than usual, the pupils blown out of proportion, and there was an edge to his smile which spoke of desire burning somewhere beneath the look of sheer adoration he was giving Dan.  
"I love you," he said, looping his arms around Dan's neck. "I love you. I love you."  
He kept repeating it, over and over, punctuating his words with kisses and soft bites to Dan's lips and neck. The taller man let himself surrender to it, his breathing growing ragged as Jones showed no signs of stopping. His every sense seemed amplified, colours sharper, sounds louder. The smell of hair gel and sweat and fruity shampoo, the rasp of stubble against stubble, the slightly calloused hands on his arms- everything, in short, that made up the impossible chaos that was Jones- was like an assault, a relentless barrage of sensation that was almost too much for him to take. He moaned, pushing his hips forward to rub against his partner.  
"Jones..." he managed, and he should really have been embarrassed by how needy that sounded but by that point he was a long way past caring. All he knew was that this was important, this was everything, and yet he still needed more. Jones paused before planting another, softer kiss against Dan's lips.  
"Yeah?" he said, in a voice rough with want. Dan couldn't speak, just whined as the younger man grinned and slipped his hands lower to grip his arse firmly. Jones giggled, kissing his cheek before slipping his hand into Dan's pocket. He pulled away a second later, holding a pound coin triumphantly aloft.  
"Wh-?" mumbled Dan, frowning at the cold absence of Jones pressing against him. The younger man beamed cheekily.  
"For my smarties," he replied innocently. "I won, remember?"  
He was acting as though everything that had taken place was perfectly normal, though the flush in his cheeks and the straining material of his trousers told a vastly different story. Dan gave a low groan of frustration. A brief expression of something- guilt? sadness? fear?- flitted across Jones' face, and he stepped back in long enough to cup Dan's cheek and press a gentle kiss to the corner of his his mouth.  
"They'll be missing us upstairs if we don't get back soon," he whispered, and the tone of his voice made it sound like an apology. Dan swallowed and nodded, which made Jones smile in relief.  
"You go up," said Dan. "I'll be there in a minute. They might get suspicious if we both show up at the same time."  
Jones nodded and hurried over to the door, smiling over his shoulder at Dan before vanishing from the room.


	6. Little Wonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took ages to update, but I was given about a million essays over the holidays and I've had terrible writers' block. It's here now, though, and I've got some (hopefully) fun chapters planned so I'll try and get back into regular updates. Um. Yeah. Enjoy?

Dan limped reluctantly back up to the office a few minutes letter, leaving behind him a very battered and dented locker. He’d known it wouldn’t help, and he’d been right, but at the time- while he was busy firing kicks into the thin metal with a cry of frustration to accompany each one- all he’d cared about was the release. He needed to hit something, and out of the options before him he figured the locker was his best bet. Besides, he liked the noise it made. The crashing of metal could almost drown out the endless cycle of half-formed images in his head. All he could think about was his previous relationships, or at least the handful of them that had lasted longer than two days, and how each and every one of them had ended with the other person dropping him by the side of the road. He didn’t understand why Jones hadn’t done the same- although when Dan thought about it he realised that all his previous relationships had ended after the other participant had finished using him for sex, and with Jones it seemed as though the problem was the exact opposite.   
He tried to hide the fact that he was in pain as he walked over to the desk, even managing to force a smile when he approached Jones. The younger man didn’t seem to notice as he walked over. He was chewing on his thumbnail and staring fixedly at a couple of sheets of paper in front of him, brow furrowed in concentration. His foot tapped out a restless rhythm against the floor. Dan was seized with the urge to reach out, to gently smooth away the crease between his eyebrows and tell him that things would be okay. All much easier said than done. Dan was struggling to just keep moving, his limbs suddenly feeling much heavier than normal. It took almost all his strength just to walk the last few steps to the desk, and his heart sank even further as he realised he recognised what was happening. He’d gone months without properly succumbing to the cloud that had plagued him since his teens, but now it seemed his luck was running out.  
Jones looked up before that train of thought could go any further, and smiled warmly. Dan took a deep breath and nodded at him with a tiny smile, leaning over to see what was written on the papers. As he did so he heard the faint squeak of wheels and sighed deeply as Jones shifted his chair ever-so-slightly closer, leaning up against Dan’s chest. The warmth of his body was startlingly real and immediate, and Dan revelled in it, letting it fill him. He knew by now that whenever Jones pulled back from sex he would apologise by being even more tactile than normal in other ways, and if Dan ever avoided it the younger man would get nervous and retreat back into his music for hours at a time. So he’d learned to put up with it, not that it was ever a chore. He struggled to let people in, let them get close to him, but Jones had managed to sneak past his defensive cynicism and wrap his skinny- though surprisingly strong- arms around Dan’s heart.  
“What have you got here?” asked Dan quietly, deliberately keeping his voice low because he knew Jones loved the way the sounds vibrated from his chest. The younger man’s eyes fluttered shut for a second before he remembered where he was.  
“Um. We’ve, uh, we’ve got… suspects! That’s what we’ve got.”  
Dan laughed despite himself, and Jones rolled his eyes.  
“Shut up. You’re distracting me on purpose and you know it. ‘S not my fault you’ve got a voice made of fuckin’ coffee grounds and stringed instruments, trying to stop me from doing my job.”  
Dan chuckled again, low and deep, and Jones shivered lightly.  
“It’s what I’m here for, Jonesy,” he replied with a smile. “Now come on. Share.”  
He reached out across Jones’ shoulder and tugged a piece of paper towards him, letting his arm rest there for a second or two more than was strictly necessary before pulling away completely and spinning to face his partner. Jones looked much more at ease, and Dan reminded himself to keep breathing. It was worth the darker spells if it meant he could see this every day, and he just had to hope Jones would let him stick around for long enough.  
He scanned the piece of paper he’d claimed from in front of the younger man and blinked in confusion.  
“Okay… so how did we get these guys as suspects?”  
“You know how you said we could get some idea of how the person cutting the power looked? Height, weight, that kind of thing?”  
“I do indeed,” replied Dan, and he kept smiling because he didn’t trust himself to stop. Jones shot him a flirtatious grin.  
“Yes, because you’re a genius detective and deserve to be recognised as such by people other than myself. Anyway, I talked to Nathan- who isn’t in any way a genius detective, but at least isn’t as computer illiterate as the pair of us, before you say anything- and he went through the database to find someone who was about the same size. Everyone here is in their twenties, about five foot ten, and average weight.”  
Dan nodded sarcastically.  
“Right, because that narrows it down.”  
Jones rolled his eyes, picking up the other sheet of paper.  
“Alright, no need to be so cheery. The hardware store got back to us, we’ve got a complete list of what was taken.”  
Dan reached out for the list, but Jones held it just out of reach and looked him in the eyes.  
“Now I want you to make sure you’re prepared,” he warned, with a glint of laughter in his eye. “You might be overwhelmed with excitement, I know how you are with these things. Always so optimistic.”  
“Just give me the damn list,” snapped Dan, fury spiking in his voice, and he cursed inwardly at the hurt look on Jones’ face. He had to learn to stop being so short-tempered, he always forgot that Jones was actually surprisingly insecure. This always happened, he always got carried away, and he was so damn self-centred that he never noticed it happening until it was too late to fix.  
“Sorry,” he muttered gruffly. Jones swallowed and smiled faintly.  
“No worries. Here.”  
He handed over the piece of paper, lingering to brush the tip of his thumb across Dan’s knuckles. Dan closed his eyes at the contact, willing the dark fog in his head to clear. He had a stable job, he had a partner who loved him, and he was thankful for that. So why was it so hard to accept it?  
He sighed and looked at the list, his nods of acknowledgement slowly turning to a confused frown the more he read. The list didn’t make sense. Fertilisers, duct tape, bleach and-  
“Paint thinner?”  
He shot a bewildered glance up at Jones, who shrugged helplessly.  
“I know. Or, rather, I don’t know.”  
One hand went up to run restlessly through the long hair, messing it up, though Dan knew that Jones knew exactly what he was doing and was perfectly aware of how good it made him look. Despite his attention to his appearance, though, Jones did look genuinely distressed. It reminded Dan of how he got when he couldn’t sleep, and would spend hours trying to figure out which sound he needed to finish the track he was working on. The answer was on the tip of the younger man’s tongue, and he just needed to work out what it was. Dan was still living in hope that sooner or later he’d be able to kiss the words out of him.  
“That’s the problem,” continued Jones, frustration coming through in his voice and making Dan want to shrink away. He didn’t know how to help, and his partner’s distress was contagious.  
“What do you think?” Dan asked, a little uncertain. Jones groaned and tugged at his hair again, drumming the fingers of his other hand against the table.  
“I don’t- I know what it is, how they’re all connected, but I just can’t see it.”  
He sighed heavily. Dan set the paper down on the desk between them and stared at it, like he could intimidate it into something more comprehensible. Thoughts began to form somewhere at the back of his mind, and he murmured them under his breath in an attempt to pin them down.  
“Bleach for cleaning stuff up, like tough stains. Duct tape for tying people up.”  
“Are you thinking torture?”  
Dan shook his head.  
“Not sure. Paint thinner would do the same job as bleach, wouldn’t it?”  
“More or less,” agreed Jones. “It’s the fertilisers that are throwing me off. I can tell there’s something… I don’t know.”  
Dan looked at him, meeting his gaze steadily. He’d never quite succeeded in finding answers in Jones’ eyes, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. Jones looked back at him, and his eyes widened. It seemed he was reading something deeper in Dan’s eyes than he’d expected to find.  
“You alright?” he asked quietly. Dan opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was a long, awkward pause.  
“I don’t know,” he answered at last. “I will be, though.”  
Jones smiled, with a confident nod that somehow managed to reassure Dan. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, but Jones did, and that meant maybe it would be alright. Jones spun away, beaming, snagging the handle of Dan’s mug on one finger and twirling it in his hand.  
“Coffee?” he asked, moving towards the kettle in the corner. Dan nodded and leaned back in his chair.  
“Yeah, please.”  
The younger man smiled as he walked away, hips swaying slightly to the beat in his head. The corners of Dan’s mouth tugged faintly upwards, watching, but he was jerked from his thoughts when the phone rang. Dan answered, speaking the familiar introduction but not really hearing himself say it. He heard the response, though. Suddenly he was paying attention, nodding and scribbling notes on the back of a discarded napkin.  
Just as he was hanging up Jones reappeared, carrying a mug of coffee and practically bouncing up and down. The movement was causing the liquid to splash and some spilled over onto his hand. The younger man gave a yelp of pain and Dan hurriedly took the cup away from him before he could do any more damage.  
“I think I know- I think I’ve worked out what it was,” said Jones, shifting anxiously. “But I’ll need to go and talk to Claire first.”  
“Hold that thought,” Dan told him, pulling his jacket on. “Our friendly neighbourhood robbers have once again stepped down their game.”  
Jones blinked in confusion, though he quickly accepted the coat Dan was holding out for him. As they hurried towards the car park he shrugged it on, talking as he did so.  
“Stepped down? What do you mean?”  
“First a diamond shop, then a hardware store. They’re getting less impressive, and I don’t get it. I just got a call that one of our suspects has been seen entering a restaurant supplies place, possibly with a gun going by what we’ve seen so far. They want a couple of officers- that’s us, by the way- to stand by just in case he tries anything more suspicious than buying an oven.”  
Jones laughed.  
“There is nothing more suspicious than buying an oven, Dan,” he said with a grin. “It’s right up there with buying your own island and a long-haired cat on the evil villain scale.”  
“Shut up,” grumbled Dan, but he was smiling despite himself. “When you start being ridiculous I start wanting to stop work and kiss you, and that’s really unhelpful when we’re trying to prevent a robbery.”  
Jones just grinned wider, grabbing the sleeve of Dan’s coat and dragging him out through the double doors.  
“Plenty of time for that later,” he replied, before stepping fully outside and blinking furiously in the sun. Dan followed, openly staring as Jones slipped out of his leather jacket. His arms were more muscular than most people expected from looking at him, and he was well aware of it, showing off with sleeveless shirts whenever possible. The drizzle of the morning had cleared to reveal surprisingly blue skies, and a tantalising warmth hung in the air that spoke of spring just around the corner. As they climbed into the car Dan wondered absently if he and Jones would be able to get a couple of weeks off in the summer, when the weather would hopefully be sunnier. Maybe they could travel, or just spend several days lying on the sofa and making out. He was flexible on that point.  
With his mind occupied with these daydreams and the warm air playing across his skin, Dan wasn’t paying much attention as they drove to the supply store. Jones had stuck a CD in, one of his own mixes, and was bobbing his head in time to the beat. Just as they were pulling up he heard the younger man’s phone ring, and he answered quickly. After a second Jones looked at him, shoving his phone back in his pocket and gesturing for him to stop the car.  
“We’ve got to go, stop here and cut across,” he said, jumbling his words slightly. “He grabbed some stuff- I think they said it was vinegar?- and now he’s making a run for it down Southbank. We’re closest.”  
Dan brought the car to a halt and Jones hopped out, hurrying off down the street and looking side to side in an attempt to spot the suspect. Dan ran to catch up, but just as he was reaching his side the younger man took off down towards the river. And Dan… watched.  
He’d seen Jones when he was drunk. He’d seen Jones when he was working through the hangover the next morning. He’d seen Jones angry, and vulnerable, and sweet. He’d seen him in various states of undress, though he was a little disappointed to say that most of those were just as a side effect of living together. What he hadn’t seen was Jones running.  
He was a really good sprinter.  
The younger man’s arms moved easily and fluidly, especially without his beloved leather jacket to restrict movement, and Dan struggled to match his pace. It was almost impossible to keep an eye on his partner and continue to mind his footing as he ran, dodging through the crowds of people that always filled the paths. After what only felt like a few seconds Dan stumbled and collided with a faintly bewildered-looking tourist. Muttering apologies and curses in more or less equal measure, Dan glanced back up to see that Jones was now almost level with the suspect.  
The scenery blurred as he ran past, the crowds of tourists thickening and dispersing around the more notable buildings. Dan was just passing the Globe theatre when, out of nowhere, someone crashed into his side. The air was driven from his lungs in a kind of strangled gasp, and he felt his legs buckle as he collided with the low wall by the Thames. Turning around he caught a brief glimpse of green eyes looking out at him from within a balaclava, but then a fist was colliding with his nose and his conscious thoughts exploded into fragments. He felt the sharp pressure of a railing against his back, but after a second that was gone and he was falling.  
“Jones-” he managed, but the words were lost as he toppled backwards and into the murky water.  
It was cold. Dan really should have been expecting that, given that it was March and in London, but even with that in mind the water was freezing. His clothes pulled at his limbs, dragging him lower, and he thrashed desperately to escape. He’d never been that strong a swimmer, and this was completely different from a couple of lengths in the leisure centre when he was a teenager. The water felt like it was alive, a seething, raging mass determined to take Dan to the bottom of the river where nobody could reach him.  
His lungs were burning now, panic clutching at his chest, and when he finally broke the surface it was only for long enough to take a gulp of air before he was sinking again. Dan tried to force himself to think logically. There were stairs nearby, he’d seen them a million times. If he could just work out where they were he could get out easily.  
Or he could just sink.  
The thought flitted across his mind before he could stop it. His limbs relaxed, the last of his energy draining away. It would be easy. He’d heard it was an alright way to go, all things considered. Sort of peaceful.  
No.  
He had Jones. He had a job. What’s more, he’d promised the younger man that he’d be alright. If nothing else, he wanted to keep that promise. Dan kicked out furiously, but everything was all mixed up in his head and surely the surface hadn’t been this far away before? His chest was on fire, lungs and muscles all screaming at him to stop, to take a breath. And then suddenly arms were closing around his shoulders, and everything was in perfect focus again, bright and sharp and terrifyingly loud.  
“Dan?”  
Jones. Dan almost smiled before the taste of river water hit his tongue and made him gag instead. Doubled over, he choked and spluttered as water left his lungs. Jones was slumped on the steps beside him, looking at him with an odd mixture of fear and rage. Dan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, which didn’t do him much good, before turning to face his partner.  
“What happened?” he asked weakly. “The suspect..?”  
“Gone. He had his mates lurking, one of them chucked you over here, and I had to come back and get you.”  
Jones moved closer, cradling Dan’s face awkwardly.  
“What the fuck were you doing, you berk?” he asked, any traces of fury in his voice drowned out by relief. “You stopped swimming.”  
His voice broke slightly, reducing him to a soft, scared whisper.  
“You stopped swimming.”  
Tears prickled behind Dan’s eyes, and he shook his head. Jones understood. Seemingly without even thinking that he might get wet, he wrapped his arms around Dan and tugged him close. The angle of the steps meant Dan was effectively curled up against the smaller man’s chest, and for once he just let himself enjoy it. Jones curled protectively around him, mumbling words that were only semi-coherent.  
“You’re not leaving me… I’m here, Dan… Don’t you dare give up, not ever, you just talk to me if you need me… God, you’re freezing.”  
Dan just let it wash over him, allowing his eyelids to flutter shut. He wasn’t used to being cared for, and the constant reassuring beat of Jones’ heart beneath his ear was strangely soothing.  
“I’ve got you, and I’m not letting you go easily,” Jones finished eventually, kissing the top of Dan’s head before grimacing as he remembered where those curls had just been. “Come on. We’re going home, you’re getting changed and drinking some soup or something, and then we need to go and face whatever DCI Pingu wants to throw at us.”  
Dan protested as Jones helped him to his feet, but walked beside him back to the car. Jones had one arm wrapped around Dan’s waist the whole time, fretting around him like an anxious parent, and they got several confused glances from the people they passed. Dan suspected it was more due to him being soaking wet rather than the fact they were both men, but he was instinctively defensive anyway. Jones seemed not to notice.  
When they reached the car, Jones directed Dan firmly to the passenger seat.  
“Do you even know how to drive?” he asked, trying not to let his voice shake from the bone-deep cold still gripping him.  
“Of course I do,” replied Jones impatiently. “Sit down, we need to get home before you freeze. Here-”  
He scooped up his leather jacket and clumsily attempted to put it across Dan’s broad shoulders. The jacket seemed almost absurdly small on him, and as the faint smell of coffee and hairspray and _home_ wafted upwards, Dan realised with a jolt how close he’d come to losing that.  
Without warning, he began to cry silently. If Jones noticed he didn’t say anything, and Dan was grateful for the silence. They drove home like that, Jones occasionally cancelling calls and pretending not to see the texts that Dan knew were from the station, and Dan promised himself again that it would be okay.  
They would work something out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, I got to go stay in London for a few days last week and I was honestly walking along Southbank with my friend going "Help me out here, where can I throw a character in? No, he needs to be rescued. This is important."

**Author's Note:**

> I own nobody in this except a couple of minor OCs. I'm basically just playing with the characters for a while.


End file.
